I need some words of encouragement............

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I need some words of encouragement............

How did it take you to have a pretty good idea of C++. You know to learn the language, because I am reading STYC++ in 21 days and it's taken me way more than 21 days probably because of my school that I have to be doing and I cannot devote all the time I want to programming (this will hopefully change when I get out of high school, I will hopefully graduate this year). So please tell me about your learning experience with this really long and complexed language (to me it is, maybe because it's technicallly the first one I've tried, well besides C which I didn't finish the book because it was hard and I wasn't really into these message boards, yes those were the dark days when I didn't go to message boards to ask for help and tried to figure it out on my own, I mean break my head, when all it takes sometimes is for someone to point to the right direction and off we go into the next topic, learning wise anyways)>

I must say that I didnt like STYC++ in 21 Days. It was my first C++ book. I found the book tedious and it left me more confused in areas. After that inital failure, I got C++ How to program by Deitel & Deitel and found that to be far better. There are still bits that are not in Deitel....but the idea of learning all from 1 book is a bit far fetched........

elchulo2002, i think it really depends on the person. i've been programming for close to 4 years (started when i was 19 and i'm 23 in a few months); first 2 years i was programming in procedural languages like FORTRAN and C. The last 2 years, I've been focusing heavily on C++ and Java. At this point there are still a lot of things for me to learn. Also, it really depends on what you mean by "a pretty good idea of C++". If you want a straight answer, I would say you could probably memorize every rule, syntax and understand every important concept in C++ in about a few months. But that doesn't mean much. Would you know how to make USE of those concepts? It's like chess, you could know all the rules but that doesn't necessarily make you a great player, you need to learn technique as well. Point I'm getting at is there's ***LOTS more to programming than just knowing language concepts (it's making use of them as well); example: i'm almost done with school but i've taken courses covering ai, computer networks, operating systems, computer architecture, databases, algorithms/data-structures (lot more, roughly ~15 courses in varying topics)... and i would honestly say that each one of these courses has givin me a better understanding of programming; giving me many ideas on where to apply my programming knowledge (not just knowing c++ alone, what could you do with it alone?). Anyways, it just takes a LONG time; and i'm sure there are guys here with 20+ years experience just laughing at me with my measly 4 years.

In a nutshell, if you really want to get serious with programming; expect it to be a life-time experience.

I've got STYS C++ in 24 hours. 2 months later, and I'm about half way thru. The point of these books are to allow you to get an basic understanding of the language, as quickly as possible. Don't think you're dumb for not having done it in 21 days. No one really has that much free time to do it that fast. Besides, it is impossible to learn an entire language in 24 hours or 21 days, unless you have an IQ of 200 +.

>> C++ How to program by Deitel & Deitel <<

Well I don't think the Deitel's writes well for people who people who have never programmed. I learnt from C How to Program when I first started, but did have to read some other books to get a better understanding of what was going on. But if you've read through at 21 days book, you would be fine with it.